Evaluation of buffalo milk production in several states of Venezuela

• Néstor Simón Montiel-Urdaneta Universidad del Zulia, Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Venezuela.
• José Raúl Pérez-González Universidad Rafael Urdaneta, Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias, Venezuela.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52973/rcfcv-wbc068

Keywords: buffaloes, dairy production, genetic factors, non-genetic factors

Abstract

The buffalo is used as an efficient fodder converter in bovine production systems into milk and quality meat. To know the potential of milk production (MP) in Venezuela, a database was evaluated from 1992 to February 2023 from 36 farms (F) in 12 states of Venezuela, corresponding to 182,413 buffaloes, 198,056 lactations, and 1,440,448 milk controls. The factors evaluated were: ecological zone (EZ), farm (F), breed (B): Murrah predominance (Mu), Mediterranean predominance (Me) and undefined crossbreeding (UC), year of study (YS), number of calvings (NC), lactation duration (LD), dry days (DD) and maternal milk production (MMP). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used, using the statistical package SAS version 9, 1. The linear additive model used was:

first-calving buffaloes between 180 and 195 days; the highest LD was observed in eighth and ninth-calving buffaloes at 310 and 330 days. The average daily milk per lactation was 6.16 ± 1.80 with a CV of 29.22%, with values as low as 3.93 kg/day; the highest average was 7.35 kg/day, but values higher than 10 kg/day/buffalo were also observed in the data analyzed. The factors EZ, F, NC, LD, DD, and MMP were statistically significant (p<0.05). Therefore, it is concluded that these factors cause variability in MP. Factor B was not statistically significant (p>0.05).